A new trailer from
Dragon Age: Inquisition offers a look at the E3 demo for EA's upcoming RPG
sequel, including developer narration. The clip runs over 16 minutes, and is
listed as "part one," so there may be more of this on the way. Word is: "Join creative director Mike
Laidlaw as he walks you through part one of the award winning Dragon Age:
Inquisition E3 gameplay demo. In part one, explore the largest Dragon Age world
ever created and lead your followers in a battle against a High Dragon."

Waves or not, crappy combat or not, I'm definitely buying this game. A game that seamlessly merges into rather cinematic cutscenes with dialogue options ala Mass Effect is an instant buy for me.

With just one look I can already tell this game is probably not going to be anywhere near as tactical as DAO. It will be more like Mass Effect -- remember ME combat also allowed you to pauze for tactical input, though we hardly had to use that feature.

If this game will be as story driven as ME with swords, magic and dragons... fuck me, instant buy fo sho!

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 15, 2014, 22:09:The strategy remains the same whether there are waves or not.

In the first game I used terrain to my advantage, I was able to actually prepare for combat and run enemies through traps and there were many other features. Sure you could blow the house down with mages if you wanted to but there was plenty of other ways to go about combat. In DA2 I can't do any meaningful preparation before a fight, use the (sporadic) terrain or any number of factors due to the wave based system. It is very limiting and makes the combat tedious as hell.

You can use whatever label you like for it but waves sucked. Maybe they would be better with stronger map and battle design, I don't know but in DA2 they sucked and made fights less strategic and more tedious. If they are a large feature of the third game I am not buying it.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 15, 2014, 17:59:Pause combat, move your characters around when the new waves comes. Come up with a new battle plan and then execute it. It's not that hard. Yes, waves do make the combat more difficult and some people do not like it. But it's not fair to say that it takes tactics out of DA2.

I have to agree with Jerykk and the others, the inserted waves mid-combat actually prevents real strategic play.

The strategy remains the same whether there are waves or not.

1. Tank keeps enemies off squishy classes.2. DPS bursts down healers and mages.3. Healer be ready to top off members if you expect any burst damage.

The only thing that changes are the individual tactics needed to realize this strategy based on battlefield conditions. The 2nd wave keeps things interesting and unpredictable which is good. The only complaint I have about waves is they used it for too many fights. They needed more diversity for the amount of combat in the game.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 15, 2014, 17:59:Pause combat, move your characters around when the new waves comes. Come up with a new battle plan and then execute it. It's not that hard. Yes, waves do make the combat more difficult and some people do not like it. But it's not fair to say that it takes tactics out of DA2.

More tedious, not more difficult. I have to agree with Jerykk and the others, the inserted waves mid-combat actually prevents real strategic play. Instead it focuses on repetitive reaction based play where you are holding back constantly and/or reloading on higher difficulties because the game is essentially loading the deck. It is bad design and not very challenging or enjoyable.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 11, 2014, 16:59:DA2 was just as tactical as DA Origins. Playing DA2 on nightmare was tough and required a lot of planning and cross class combos to beat during combat.

No, DA:O was more tactical and less bullshit even with potion cooldowns that weren't shared. Memorizing the number and timing of enemy spawns so that you can use abilities is not tactical. DA2 was tough on Nightmare but it was tough for bullshit arbitrary reasons like one shots from instantly spawned in enemies, not because the gameplay was inherently challenging.

False, being able to change your plans in the middle of the battle takes more tactics, not less. The 2nd wave forced you to move your healers and tanks and prevented you from using all your big cooldowns at the beginning of the fight. You also had to set up cross class combos a lot more in DA2 than in DAO.

Wave-based spawns means that you couldn't plan for anything. How can you form a strategy when you have no idea what you'll be fighting against? You didn't know how many waves would spawn or the composition of those waves. As such, you ended up saving all of your strong spells and abilities just in case you needed them later, making combat feel even more tedious and grindy.

That's why you can pause the game at any time and issue commands at your leisure. Saying you can't adjust in the middle of combat when you have all the time in the world doesn't make a lot of sense.

Pause combat, move your characters around when the new waves comes. Come up with a new battle plan and then execute it. It's not that hard. Yes, waves do make the combat more difficult and some people do not like it. But it's not fair to say that it takes tactics out of DA2.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 11, 2014, 16:59:DA2 was just as tactical as DA Origins. Playing DA2 on nightmare was tough and required a lot of planning and cross class combos to beat during combat.

No, DA:O was more tactical and less bullshit even with potion cooldowns that weren't shared. Memorizing the number and timing of enemy spawns so that you can use abilities is not tactical. DA2 was tough on Nightmare but it was tough for bullshit arbitrary reasons like one shots from instantly spawned in enemies, not because the gameplay was inherently challenging.

False, being able to change your plans in the middle of the battle takes more tactics, not less. The 2nd wave forced you to move your healers and tanks and prevented you from using all your big cooldowns at the beginning of the fight. You also had to set up cross class combos a lot more in DA2 than in DAO.

Wave-based spawns means that you couldn't plan for anything. How can you form a strategy when you have no idea what you'll be fighting against? You didn't know how many waves would spawn or the composition of those waves. As such, you ended up saving all of your strong spells and abilities just in case you needed them later, making combat feel even more tedious and grindy.

I did like the cross-class combos in DA2 and the game definitely did make each class more important to the group (you couldn't do an all-mage party like in DAO). However, the wave-based spawns were just lazy design. Bioware balanced the game for Normal difficulty, where enemies were basically cannon fodder, so to compensate they added waves to draw the fights out and superficially increase the challenge. That worked fine on Normal difficulty but not so much on Nightmare, where enemies actually posed a threat.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 12, 2014, 00:24:False, being able to change your plans in the middle of the battle takes more tactics, not less. The 2nd wave forced you to move your healers and tanks and prevented you from using all your big cooldowns at the beginning of the fight. You also had to set up cross class combos a lot more in DA2 than in DAO.

Totally disagree. It just required memorization and repetition due to its penchant for teleporting waves of crap in from offscreen, often with little to no transition and doing so several times in many encounters. The inability to setup challenging encounters without that crap was due to mapping deficiencies making for a lack of compelling combat areas where more strategy could be employed. I have trouble even saying it was more challenging because much of the challenge was just repetition and slogging through hoards of enemies, not that the enemies themselves required a lot of strategy.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 11, 2014, 16:59:DA2 was just as tactical as DA Origins. Playing DA2 on nightmare was tough and required a lot of planning and cross class combos to beat during combat.

No, DA:O was more tactical and less bullshit even with potion cooldowns that weren't shared. Memorizing the number and timing of enemy spawns so that you can use abilities is not tactical. DA2 was tough on Nightmare but it was tough for bullshit arbitrary reasons like one shots from instantly spawned in enemies, not because the gameplay was inherently challenging.

False, being able to change your plans in the middle of the battle takes more tactics, not less. The 2nd wave forced you to move your healers and tanks and prevented you from using all your big cooldowns at the beginning of the fight. You also had to set up cross class combos a lot more in DA2 than in DAO.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 11, 2014, 16:59:DA2 was just as tactical as DA Origins. Playing DA2 on nightmare was tough and required a lot of planning and cross class combos to beat during combat.

No, DA:O was more tactical and less bullshit even with potion cooldowns that weren't shared. Memorizing the number and timing of enemy spawns so that you can use abilities is not tactical. DA2 was tough on Nightmare but it was tough for bullshit arbitrary reasons like one shots from instantly spawned in enemies, not because the gameplay was inherently challenging.

Redmask wrote on Jul 10, 2014, 22:23:If you consider having to reload and pause constantly due to enemies parachuting in waves from offscreen then sure, it was pretty 'tactical'. Having to the pause the game by itself does not a tactics game make.

This. DA2 was not very tactical, it mostly consisted of saving your CC and harder hitting abilities for fresh waves of reinforcements.

DA2 was just as tactical as DA Origins. In fact, DA2 was more tactical because they fixed some of the glaring cheese tactics such as spamming health potions with no cooldowns and mages being so op that it made the other classes obsolete.

Playing DA2 on nightmare was tough and required a lot of planning and cross class combos to beat during combat.

Redmask wrote on Jul 10, 2014, 22:23:If you consider having to reload and pause constantly due to enemies parachuting in waves from offscreen then sure, it was pretty 'tactical'. Having to the pause the game by itself does not a tactics game make.

This. DA2 was not very tactical, it mostly consisted of saving your CC and harder hitting abilities for fresh waves of reinforcements.

1badmf wrote on Jul 11, 2014, 00:14:haha yeah aveline and isabela were always my party members cuz of the catty bullshit they always flung at each other. also you don't need to have a savegame ready. i'm pretty sure i've read that they're gonna release a savegame maker program thingy for everyone to abuse.

Yeah, Dragon Keep. Which is now roughly seven months late to even go into beta, so I don't hold out much hope that they'll have it ready before Inquisition releases. And even so, it's much more fun to get all your decisions from playing it. It was a lot of fun to replay Origins.

haha yeah aveline and isabela were always my party members cuz of the catty bullshit they always flung at each other. also you don't need to have a savegame ready. i'm pretty sure i've read that they're gonna release a savegame maker program thingy for everyone to abuse.

I can't even imagine how someone can stomach to play DA2 on Nightmare difficulty. There is SO MUCH COMBAT in that game, that every one of those battles taking ten minutes to complete would literally be a nightmare.

The story is pretty good in it, actually. I replayed it just a little while ago to prepare for DA:I (and to get a good save game with decisions carried through into it), and I liked the story quite a bit more than I did the first time I played it. I paid more interest to the intra-party banter, and it was plain funny at times, especially between Aveline and Isabela.

But the combat, ugh... I just put three mages in my party and firestormed the shit out of everything on normal mode. That way at least things would keep moving.

The combat doesn't look much better in DA:I, to be honest, but I guess I'll just firestorm my way through it again so I can get at the story and explore the admittedly gorgeous areas.

Wetworks24 wrote on Jul 10, 2014, 21:51:DA2 was actually quite tactical on Nightmare difficulty. Battles would often take 5-10 minutes where you paused after every command.

If you consider having to reload and pause constantly due to enemies parachuting in waves from offscreen then sure, it was pretty 'tactical'. Having to the pause the game by itself does not a tactics game make.

Cutter wrote on Jul 10, 2014, 15:23:Exactly. Unlike Skyrim it won't be moddable so what good is it?

Well if Skyrim could do some basics better it wouldn't have to be modded as much. Now DA was moddable, it has party members better than a companion mod in Skryrim. I have to assume the UI is better than skyrim, good chance even after mods. It can do pause base, I don't think there is a skyrim mod for that. You can program your companions intricately (assuming that is still in the game from 1 and 2), Skyrim mods have nothing here.

Battle system looks more in depth.

There are many things that could be better here with or without skyrim mods.